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JAMES H. BELL was born November 30, 1822, in Nicholas county, Kentucky, the son of Robert Bell, who was born March 8, 1795, in Bourbon county, Kentucky. His father was born in Ireland, and had but four children, Robert, and three sisters. After his sisters were married, he had no knowledge of any relative in America, bearing his family name. He was a soldier from Bourbon county in the War of 1812. Robert Bell and Susannah Baker were married February 12, 1818, in that county, and moved to Nicholas county, Illinois, arriving in the fall of 1830, and settled four miles south of the present town of Rochester, where he continued farming to the time of his death on June 25, 1872, near Illiopolis, from injuries caused by a runaway team, four days previous. Mrs. Susannah Bell was made a cripple for life by the same accident. They had lived more than fifty-four years as man and wife, and she survived him till February 29, 1876.
The subject of this sketch came to Springfield, Illinois, with his father, and was married in Sangamon county, Illinois, May 7, 1843, to Miss Milla Dotson, who was born November, 1822, in Loudon county, Virginia; they had four children: Eliza A., born February 25, 1844, and married September 4, 1864, to Benjamin C. Gray, who was born August 12, 1832, near Hopkinsville, Kentucky; Mrs. Gray died December, 1874; John W., the second child, died under two years of age; Hiram F., born December 17, 1852; he spent two years in California, and traveled over the greater portion of the State, then returned home; he is now unmarried, and lives with his brother, one and a half miles west of Berry station, on the O. & M. Railroad; James M., born August 6, 1856; studied medicine in Springfield, and attended the Medical College at Ann Arbor, Michigan; after graduating he returned home and was married to Laura F. North, daughter of Robert North, and resides one and a half miles west of Berry
station. Mr. James H. Bell has resided in this county fifty-one years, and remembers well the hardships and privations of the early settler. There were but few schools in his early days, consequently his education was limited. His summers were spent at work on the farm, and the winter time in making rails. To pay for the first land he bought, he made rails at fifty cents per hundred, to raise the first payment. He lived on the farm from the time he was married until four years after the death of his wife, then sold off his stock and moved to Springfield for the purpose of schooling his youngest son, and remained in Springfield three years, and then returned to the farm and continued farming until the present season, and has spent a part of this summer on a trip to Missouri, Kansas and Colorado, and has been twice to the mountains, traveling on different roads in going and coming for the purpose of making himself acquainted with the west; he has also made several trips to the South with stock, traveling
by rail and boat, and at times by land. At one time, in company with a partner, he purchased a flat-boat at Peoria, and loaded it with produce, went down the river as far as Vicksburg, remained there three weeks before disposing of the boat and cargo, and while there went and viewed the battlefield, and stood under the shade of the tree that was said to be General Grant's headquarters, and near by was the tree where he tied his horse, the ring and staple still remaining as he left it; after disposing of the boat he returned home by rail. He is now living a retired life with his youngest brother, two miles west of Berry station.